


Turn the Corner

by pyrrhical (anoyo)



Category: Merlin - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-04
Updated: 2009-12-04
Packaged: 2018-05-18 14:16:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5931453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anoyo/pseuds/pyrrhical
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur has an excellent sense of direction. Merlin knows this like he knows about his own magic: it's inarguable, something that cannot be unknown, once known. And Merlin certainly knows. Arthur's sense of direction has gotten them out of more situations than Merlin would really like to admit -- situations where magic would help, yes, but not if Merlin couldn't figure out where to use that magic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Turn the Corner

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted 12/4/09 [here](http://merlinadvent.livejournal.com/31161.html).

Arthur has an excellent sense of direction. Merlin knows this like he knows about his own magic: it's inarguable, something that cannot be unknown, once known. And Merlin certainly knows. Arthur's sense of direction has gotten them out of more situations than Merlin would really like to admit -- situations where magic would help, yes, but not if Merlin couldn't figure out where to use that magic.

That Arthur has an excellent sense of direction is something that Merlin isn't going to dispute. It's excellent.

Excellent or not, that doesn't make them any less lost.

Some sort of dark magic had put them in the center of a forest that Merlin is sure is secretly a maze of some variety. The trees are too straight and the bushes are too evenly spaced to keep him and Arthur from getting through. Merlin knows it has to be dark magic, because he's sure there is no benign spell that translates to "put them somewhere from which there is no easy return" unless it's being used by a sadistic, but earnest, taskmaster; definitely dark magic. The witch with the warts -- Merlin thanks the stereotypes, yet again, for hiding him another day -- was chanting very loudly. Helpful in identifying the spell, but not much else, since Merlin can't really mention that he identified the spell.

They are still lost.

"I think it's this way," Arthur says, and Merlin jumps. To Merlin's credit, it's been some time since Arthur's spoken, as he's been crouched in order to stare at some indiscernible undergrowth for god only knows how long, so Merlin wasn't really expecting him to suddenly start speaking. He's not sure what he was expecting -- maybe a helpful signpost in red paint -- but, well, it wasn't that.

"Really," Merlin says, using a voice that he hopes puts forward all the incredulity he feels for what has to be the tenth time Arthur's said something along those lines.

Arthur grits his teeth in answer and begins walking, which leaves Merlin with two equally ridiculous options. He picks the one that doesn't leave him alone in a sorceress' evil maze and follows Arthur, debating the merits that this option, really has over the other.

As he walks, passing trees that all look completely identical and form walls that cannot possibly have formed on their own, Merlin spares a thought for how they got here. Not precisely more than one, as the story is a tad embarrassing, and he doesn't get much past, So there we were, collecting herbs. Well, actually, I was collecting herbs and Arthur was following me because he was avoiding Sir Plenimore because Sir Plenimore keeps asking Arthur for relationship advice and Arthur is about two seconds from throwing him off a battlement. Anyway, herbs are delicate things that all look roughly the same, and that was apparently not the right one to pull, but this cannot be my fault. Dammit. before Arthur stops abruptly and Merlin walks into his back.

Merlin catches himself on Arthur's sleeve just before he's completely counterbalanced, and Arthur glares but doesn't say anything, instead gesturing first for silence, and then for Merlin to look around the corner. Because he's Merlin, and that's Arthur, Merlin does, and is completely unprepared for what he finds at the end of the lane they were about to turn into (a dead end, by the way; Merlin wouldn't say, "I told you so," because there are only so many times you can say that in one night before your life and limb become potential sacrifices).

A boy sits at the end of the lane, staring intensely off into the trees. His skin is too pale, his clothes too large, and the lustrous darkness of his eyes and hair contrast too sharply. In the filtered sunlight, he looks like something more than human, but less than sprite. He is real, obviously, and Merlin doesn't consider for a second that he is a forest spirit. There's something about him, though, that simply doesn't feel right, but Merlin can't put his finger on it.

From the furrow in his brow, Merlin can see that Arthur feels the not-right-ness just as keenly as Merlin does, and from the way he hasn't said anything yet, Arthur says-without-saying that he's just as unable to place it. Before Merlin can say anything to Arthur -- what, he doesn't know yet -- the boy turns from the trees to stare toward the corner that he and Arthur are now too visibly leaning around. 

"You may come out," the boy says, his voice soft and melodic, but somehow wrong, as though its vibrations simply don't fit with the world around them. Like the way he looks, the way he sounds seems to imply that he does not belong here. "I am the purpose of this curse. You cannot leave here without speaking with me."

Merlin can easily predict Arthur's reaction to these words, and he is not mistaken. Arthur draws his sword as he turns the corner and marches straightforwardly toward the boy, though he stops within the sword's reach; a gentleman's gesture to the unarmed, even if a sorcerer. "You are the cause of this?" Arthur asks, pointing to the boy with the tip of his blade even as Merlin draws up behind him.

Somehow, eerily, Merlin knows that this is wrong even before the boy says so. Something about this situation feels reminiscent, like it's happened before, even though he knows that it hasn't.

"That's not what I said," the boy says, his eyes the crisp blue of the sky after winter rain and completely expressionless. "I said that I am the purpose, not the cause. You saw and heard the cause yourself; I am merely another expression, like the maze around me." The boy smiles then, a surprisingly warm gesture that does not meet his chilled eyes. "Congratulations, Pendragon. You have made it to the center of the maze. Your reward is to be allowed to leave this maze once my purpose has been fulfilled."

"Then fulfill your purpose," Arthur commands, his voice neither threatening nor kind. "Though I do not care much for the rewards granted by sorcerers."

The boy smiles again. "Again you misunderstand. The sorceress was a fraud. She knew the words, but not their truths." His eyes flicker to Merlin as he says this, but quickly return to Arthur. "She only knew that a rough translation of her spell sent you far away, to a place she believed to be the underworld. What she did, in truth, was send you into a wizard's test. She used an incantation that is as old as the Old Religion and almost as powerful. It tests the true merit of the goals of the one upon whom it has been cast. When not cast upon a sorcerer, it tests whatever virtue is valued most highly. Because she cast it upon the two of you, however, what this spell did was something else altogether. It cannot separate you; that would be against its purpose, and magic can never do something against itself.

"Instead, it endeavored to test, and represent, the bonds that tie you together." The boy looks into the trees once more, as though searching for something, before turning back to Arthur as though he had never paused. "It could find nothing suitable. In the reaches of its knowledge, nothing could represent you but you. In future, you will be that which ties are judged against.

"The spell then faced a double-edged sword. It could not complete the task for which it was created, but neither could it simply release you, as a failed spell might have done. The weight of the power that feeds the spell is great; so great that it has gained, over the ages, something of its own sentience. It conversed with the Old Religion, in the loosest of terms, and was able to reach a suitable middle ground: rather than show you what you are, in the form of the ultimate of you, it is showing you what you are not, in the penultimate. Lacking one, what you would have become. In essence, it delivers to you the truth you would have seen by virtue of showing you what you would lack if you were not as you are now." The boy smiles once more. "My purpose is that. I am that penultimate."

Even as Merlin sees the confusion written across Arthur's face, he begins to see what the boy might mean. To see why, too, he felt he knew this, yet how he could not possibly, and why the boy's very essence screams discord. When he thinks of these things, he finds he knows precisely who the boy is.

"You're me," Merlin says, as softly as he can manage, but still echoing harshly in the unnaturally quiet maze forest.

As Arthur turns to Merlin, a look of incredulity on his face, the boy replies, "Almost, but not quite. If I were you, you would simply see yourself. Both of you, together. I am the penultimate."

"One of us," Merlin says, spelling it out for himself as much as for Arthur as he says it. "Apart. But not apart, because there's only one at all."

"Yes," the boy says.

"Wait," Arthur says, looking between Merlin and the boy. "I understand what you're trying to say. Why you're just one person, though I don't know why you're Merlin and not me. What I don't know is why you're in the middle of this maze. If you're 'the penultimate' as you say, shouldn't you be living however you'd live as that?"

Merlin nods, and, to his surprise, so does the boy. "You do understand, and that is not flawed. You fail to grasp, however, that for that very reason, I am here, in this wood. As the penultimate, this is where I reside."

"In a forest?" Merlin asks, though he doesn't realize he's said it aloud until Arthur turns to him and nods. He clears his throat, and continues, "Are you saying that if we're not whatever we are, we don't exist at all?"

The boy shakes his head. "No. The possibilities that the spell could represent were only those of the course of nature. In that course, there was only one eventuality that did not have you together, and it was this one, with you alone. You exist, but Arthur does not. That is the only possibility in which you do not reside together."

Arthur startles and finally, after they have conversed this long, sheathes his sword. "All right," he says, glancing back at Merlin with his customary we're-dealing-with-something-we're-going-to-make-jokes-on-later expression, "assuming that there's no way that I could exist without Merlin, you're saying that there's no possible future where we both exist but don't meet? That seems awfully farfetched." Arthur barks a laugh shortly, shaking his head. "What am I even talking about? This is reality; any other is farfetched all on its own."

"Perhaps," the boy says, "but nature dictates what it does. "When you both exist, you exist in tandem, for at least the stretch of the Pendragon's lifetime." The boy's eyes flicker to Merlin again, but then quickly away; Merlin tries not to think about what this might mean. "In the almost infinite possibilities that nature was able to determine, only one arose wherein you did not meet, and the result was this. We could speak all night and you might only breach the surface of why this maze is as it has to be, but if we do that, you will not have time to catch the sorceress who cast this enchantment, and the Old Religion does not wish her to keep its knowledge. It is sacrilege, for her to keep something which she does not truly understand."

Merlin adds silently to this, But not only are we letting you keep this knowledge, we're explaining it to you in full detail. In a magical forest. That's not suspicious at all. If Arthur has drawn any conclusions while the boy who is not Merlin has been speaking, he does not appear to want to discuss them yet.

"All right," Arthur says, and Merlin can hear the command in his voice again. He can see that while Arthur is tired of this game, he is willing to see it to its end, as he sees everything else, for no reason other than that he should, it being the best and most honorable thing to do. Maybe, sometimes, Merlin likes to hope that Arthur has a secret motivation to honestly learn these things, and that it's more than just knightly honor. He thinks he might know Arthur well enough to judge that, by now. "You say you do not want to take all night. Please, then, simply say what you wish to say and release us from this enchantment."

The boy inclines his head to the command in Arthur's voice, a gesture that Merlin cannot imagine himself making with any sort of seriousness. If this boy is him, it is a very different him. Perhaps that had not been evident enough until that moment, in such a simple, unimportant gesture. 

"Without that which creates the ultimate, the penultimate can only live half of its potential. Power, and the promise of ability, do not change for want of another soul's accompaniment. The path to attaining them, however, is obscured based on the natural ability to find that which is needed. Without that which makes it ultimate, the penultimate is eternally lost, meant to wander an endless maze, searching for either an exit or a center, neither of which have true definition, and neither of which he can truly picture, because they are missing from this universe.

"No matter what other change is made to the flow of nature and Destiny, this is the only path upon which only one of you travels. That all the rest of your journeys lie together can only begin to tell you how barren a journey alone might seem." Slowly, the boy stands, then primly gestures back the way they came. "My purpose is met. If you walk back the way you came, once you have reached the turn in the trees, you will be out of the maze. The sorceress will be unprepared and a league to your west in a small hovel. Though you are no friend of the Old Religion, neither are you a friend of unkind sorcery. We would be much obliged if you would right the wrong that is presented in her untrue knowledge." 

When the boy finishes speaking, Merlin blinks, or thinks he blinks, because the boy is simply no longer before his eyes, and Merlin's mind cannot process his immediate winking out of reality without the guise of darkness to pass it through. The look on Arthur's face implies that he may feel very similarly to Merlin.

Without saying a word, Merlin pivots and begins walking. Just before he reaches the bend in the trees, Arthur's voice comes from behind him, saying, "We'll discuss this 'lost without me' thing when we get back to the palace, shall we?" with a smile that Merlin can see. There are times when Merlin feels an irrational dislike of himself; never before has that self had a separate corporeal form to dislike. Merlin thinks this may actually come in very handy, once he's done cursing its existence.

**Author's Note:**

> \--
> 
> Notes:
> 
> I realize that penultimate existence is semantically inherently flawed, but my reasoning is thus: because it is a one in a million possibility, it is thus almost an impossibility, and thus the penultimate to the ultimate, which is the reality, and thus the reality that they see itself, the forest manifest, is the penultimate also. 
> 
> Also, I feel the need to admit that this was originally supposed to go something like this:
> 
> Merlin: Haha, you got us lost.  
> Arthur: Shut up, Merlin.  
> Merlin: So, about that "we're lost" thing.  
> Arthur: Yes?  
> Merlin: You really do know where we are, right?  
> Arthur: Uhm, no. We're actually lost.  
> Merlin: fas;ldfjaksjf;
> 
> The end. This is what happened when tired + wired + love of semantics & metaphysics happen ALL AT ONCE. Have a nice night. Tomorrow's will be up tomorrow morning. UNDER THE WIRE, THIS ONE IS. 23:32 CST right now.


End file.
